"You will die," she whispered, a tongue unfurling from her mouth, dripping maggots. "You have entered hell. You should have run. You should have run!"
The creature leaped forward again. Marco and the others fired their guns. Bullets tore through the woman's head, shattering the skull, leaving nothing but a jaw on the neck. Yet still the creature leaped forward, claws lashing. The blades sliced through another man. More bullets sank into the creature, and the sound was deafening, filling the tunnel, echoing, slamming back into their ears. More fragments of bullets flew, and Marco winced as one fragment sliced across his helmet, ringing his head.
"Hold your fire!" Ben-Ari shouted. "Enough! Hold your fire!"
They lowered their smoking guns.
The corpse lay on the tracks, not much left of it. A single limb still twitched. Most of the arm seemed human. From the wrist down, instead of a hand . . .
"That's a scum claw," Marco said, and he couldn't hear his own voice. His ears felt thick, full of cotton, and the ringing hurt.
"It's some kind of Frankenstein monster," Addy said, disgust suffusing her face. "The scum chopped off her hands and sewed on goddamn claws. Sick bastards."
Marco lifted the woman's wrist, examining the bloodstained claw. He exhaled slowly. "This claw . . . it's not grafted on." He looked back at the others. "It's part of her body."
"Nonsense," Addy said. "There have got to be stitches, a scar, something."
Addy knelt too, examining the wrist in the flashlight. But they found no scars, no stitching. No, this was no Frankenstein monster. The woman had grown these claws herself. They were a part of her body, as much as Marco's hands were parts of his.
"Mangkukulam," said Lailani and crossed herself. "A witch."
"Not an ass wang?" Addy said.
"Aswang," said Lailani. "That means demon. Mangkukulam is a witch." She shook her head. "Whatever this creature is, demon or witch, it's evil. This whole place is evil." She shivered and looked around her. "There is evil in the walls. In the air. In the darkness. Inside me." She pulled on her gas mask, fingers shaking. "Don't breathe the air. It's wrong. It's so wrong here. It's inside of us already. I can feel it, like a rotting baby in my womb."
The arm was still twitching. Marco dropped it and looked at his comrades.
"Guys . . . where are we?"
They stared back, silent, fear in their eyes.
"Hell," Lailani whispered, and her voice echoed through the darkness. Hell. Hell. Hell.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"So how many scum did you kill in the Appalachians, Commander?" Addy asked, leaning toward Corporal Diaz.
"Was it worse than here?" said Elvis, looking at the corporal.
They were riding in the train, traveling onward in the darkness. Wounded. Afraid. Several kilometers deep. Sitting in the locomotive, Marco twisted around to see the others in the cart behind him, crowding around Corporal Diaz.
"Let the man rest," Marco said. "The last thing the commander wants in this hellhole is to relive another hell."
They all turned to look at Marco, then back at Diaz.
"So did it hurt when the scum tore out your spine?" Addy said.
"Of course it fucking hurt!" Elvis said, glaring at her, then looked back at Diaz. "So did the scum gore any of your organs too?"
Corporal Diaz raised his hands. "All right, soldiers. Enough questions. I'll tell you the story." He lowered his voice, and the others leaned closer in the cart. "There were six hundred of us, an entire battalion. We heard that the scum were gathering in the mountains, forming a swarm. Intel told us there were thousands of the bastards converging, prepared to scuttle toward DC. We stalked them through the forest for days. Days of rain. Of mosquitoes large enough to bite off your balls. Days when all we craved was a warm shower and something better to eat than squirrels. And one day we heard footfalls between the trees. Massive footfalls that shook the forest. We advanced slowly. A low grumble rose. There was something big ahead, something—"
Elvis gasped. "Was it a scum king? I've heard they grow as large as Godzilla."
"It certainly sounded like it," said Diaz. "I volunteered to scope it out. I advanced alone, gun held before me, stalking the creature. For hours I hunted it through the woods, climbing mountains, wading through rivers. Finally, in a copse of oaks, I came upon it. Bigfoot—shitting in the woods! He was so pissed off he tore me apart."
The others all groaned.
"Really, Commander!" Addy said. "Tell the story properly."
Diaz was laughing. "Guys, you don't want to hear the real story." He grew solemn. "Real war stories are never fun. They're full of grief and loss and pain. You'll understand someday. When you go home, and your friends and family want stories from Corpus, you'll understand."
Everyone was silent for long moments. The corporal was right, Marco thought. If he ever did see his father again, he never wanted to speak of this damn place. Of the woman with six arms. Of those who died on the tracks. Of any of this.
"Commander," Marco said, twisting around from the controls, "I have a question for you."
Diaz nodded. "Shoot."
"Why are you here?" Marco said. "I don't mean any disrespect, Commander. But you were severely wounded in the Appalachians. You no longer have to fight. I know that Fort Djemila was destroyed, but you could find another training base, train more recruits. Hell, after your injury, I bet they'd have given you an honorable discharge. You don't have to be on a combat mission here with us."
"It's because he loves us so much!" Addy said, batting her eyelashes. "Especially me."
Elvis groaned. "Maple, Sergeant Stumpy wouldn't love you if you were made of bacon."
Corporal Diaz remained somber. "That's a good question. One I've considered myself many times." He stared for a moment at the walls of the tunnel as they rolled by. Finally he spoke again. "I was a fat kid. Really. I was the fattest kid in my school. The other students teased me that I could roll faster than walk. They would taunt me, throw things at me, beat me. And I was too weak to fight back. I would run from them. I would hide. And it's damn hard to run and hide when you weigh as much as a scum queen."
Addy's eyes widened. "You, Commander?" She let her eyes stray down to the corporal's muscular body. "If you don't mind me saying, you've trimmed down and buffed up. Just your pinky finger has more muscles than Poet does."
"Hey!" Marco said.
"Oh, I look quite different now," Diaz said. "But when I was in high school, ready to join the army, they turned me down. Too fat, kid, they said to me. I was ashamed. My brothers, my cousins, all were joining the military. My dad's still in; he's a Master Sergeant serving in Germany. I spent a year training, getting stronger, and I swore I'd never be that sad, bullied kid again. Spent that whole damn year in the gym. When I finally joined the army, when I shot scum, I imagined shooting those old bullies from school. As I see it, the scum are the bullies of the galaxy. And I don't want to hide from them. Not anymore. They sent me to Fort Djemila after I was wounded, but when the scum invaded the base, when I fought them there, when I saw them kill Corporal Webb and Caveman and the others . . . I knew I had to keep fighting. That I'd never hide from a fight again." A twinkle lit his eyes. "And I've always loved shoot 'em up video games."
"We're glad to have you here, Commander," Marco said. "I can think of no one better to lead our squad."
"It's too bad you can't roll anymore, Commander," Addy said. "That would really help clear out these tunnels."
"With the way you've been guzzling our battle rations, you'll be ready to roll in no time, Maple," Elvis said, then wailed as Addy punched him.
As they continued through the tunnel, Marco looked into the darkness, considering Diaz's story. The corporal had been given a pass from the military, yet he had struggled, lost the weight, and volunteered to fight. He could have remained in some training base, yet he had come here to Corpus with them, placing himself in danger. Marco himself had never wanted this. He had been drafted against his will.
He had been chosen by Ben-Ari for this mission, had not volunteered, and barely an hour went by without homesickness.
I wish I could be as brave, as strong, as dedicated as Diaz, Marco thought, turning his head to look at his squad leader. Marco had come to admire many people here in the army. Ben-Ari, for her wisdom and leadership. Sergeant Singh, for his strength and honor. Lailani, for her courage. But perhaps more than all of them, Marco thought, in years ahead he would remember Corporal Diaz, the man who had trained his squad in Djemila, who had come with that squad here into the darkness of space.
I won't want to talk about Corpus when I go home, Marco thought. But I'll want to talk about my commanders. About my friends. About what I learned from them. About how they taught me to find my own strength.
"What're you thinking of so seriously there, Poet?" Addy reached out to muss his hair.
"Bigfoot," he said.
Addy hopped into the locomotive with him, then sat on his lap.
"Get off!" Marco said. "Elvis was right, you weigh a ton."
She pinched his cheek. "Shut up and keep driving, Poet. You're being all contemplative and sad, so I'm going to stay and bug you."
Marco sighed and kept staring ahead. "You're the real bully."
But he was glad to have Addy here. She was his link to home. She was his closest thing to family here. She was crude, loud, and stubborn, but damn it, Marco loved the girl. He was glad she was here—even as she started pinching his nose. They rolled on through the shadows, plunging deeper into the mines, and Marco never wanted her to leave.
"Addy," he said.
"Poet?"
As she sat on his lap, he wrapped his arms around her.
"Back at home, you annoyed me to no end," Marco said. "You were always stealing my manuscripts, knuckling my head, wrestling me to the ground, and twice I caught you peeking at me in the shower."
She grinned. "Hey, how else is a girl supposed to learn what boy parts look like?"
"Sometimes I hated living with you," Marco continued. "After your parents died, after my father took you in, you became a sort of annoying little sister."
"You're only a few days older," Addy said. "And I'm pretty sure I'm bigger than you." She hopped on his lap.
"But Addy, I'm glad you're with me here," Marco said. "More than anyone else in the world, even more than Diaz, I can't think of anyone else to face a horde of bloodthirsty alien centipedes with."
"Aww, you sure know your way into a girl's heart." She kissed his cheek and pinched his nose. "Such a sweetie. If I weren't your foster sister, I'd marry you." She mussed his hair again. "And I'm glad you're here too. It's nice to have somebody from home. I love you to bits, little brother, you know that, right? Even though I annoy you."
"Love you too," he said. "Even though you weigh more than an elephant's ass."
As the train continued through the darkness, Marco kept his arms around Addy, holding her close, because a new fear filled him here. He thought of all those he had lost. He thought of Caveman dying on the tarmac. He thought of the soldiers dying in the crash. And he was afraid. He did not know how he could survive if anything were to happen to Addy. She was his best friend, his only family, and he never wanted to let her go.
* * * * *
They were twenty kilometers down the track when the tunnel opened into a cavern, and Marco pressed down on the brakes. It was a small cavern, barely larger than Marco's bedroom back home, but it gave them a place to stretch, to bandage their wounds, to eat battle rations.
"It's night," Lieutenant Ben-Ari said, checking her wristwatch. "Take six hours. Sleep. We'll need our strength tomorrow."
"We should not sleep here," Lailani said, looking around through the lenses of her gas mask. She stood while the others sat, and she held her rifle with both hands. "This place is unholy. We should find an exit and leave. As fast as possible."
But the others were already yawning.
"It might be days before we find a way out," Addy said. "And I'm pooped. You can guard while we sleep, Lailani."
Lailani walked toward the edge of the cavern. She stood by the tracks, peering down the tunnel toward the lurking darkness ahead. When she turned back toward the others, the flashlights shone in her gas mask lenses, and she appeared like a creature herself, like a diseased machine, all metal and glass and blood.
"We should never have come here," she said.
"No shit," Addy said. "This moon's a dump."
"I don't just mean this moon," said Lailani. "We should never have gone into space. Into the dark. Not us. Not humanity. Humanity was not meant to travel into the shadows." She shook her head. "There are terrors in the shadows. There are monsters best left undisturbed. We flew too high. We dug too deep. We woke them."
A shudder ran through the group. Marco thought back to his home, to the scum who had slain his mother. Had the aliens invaded because humanity had gone into space, stirred the hornets' nest?
Lieutenant Ben-Ari rose to her feet. "Humanity, de la Rosa?" she said. "Humanity was busy destroying itself on Earth." Her cheeks flushed. For the first time, Marco saw the lieutenant look truly upset. "Humanity butchered itself, one group destroying another, one war after another. Burning. Murdering. But a few brave souls saw nobility in our species. They saw that humans can be more than naked apes who remain on a speck in the darkness, hurting one another in the name of this ideology or that. They saw our future in the stars. A noble future. One I still believe in."
Lailani spread out her arms. "Behold our noble future."
Marco felt it best to change the topic. The last thing the troops needed now was talk of cruelty and evil.
"Speaking of Earth," he said. "What do you all miss from home the most?" He looked at Lieutenant Ben-Ari. "Ma'am, if you don't mind me asking."
Ben-Ari sat back down. She leaned against the wall, and she spoke in a soft voice. "I grew up without a home, Emery. The HDF was my home. My father was an officer like his father before him. I spent my childhood moving from one military base to another. My mother died when I was young, and my father passed away only a year ago. But I suppose . . . I miss him more than anything. My father. We never had much time together, what with his busy career, but sometimes on Saturdays he'd take me out into the desert or grasslands or ocean or wherever he was stationed. We'd look at the stars together. I know the stars are frightening to many people since the Cataclysm. But to my father, they were always things of beauty. He never told me stories of the stars, just sat with me silently, and we'd stare up together. I miss that the most."
For a moment everyone was silent. It wasn't often that their platoon commander spoke so openly of her life, of her feelings. Back at Fort Djemila, Ben-Ari had seemed as distant, powerful, and vengeful as a goddess, but Marco realized that Ben-Ari too felt lost, felt lonely, was just as human, as afraid, as hurt as all of them.
Finally Addy spoke. "I miss beer. And hot dogs. And hockey. God, I miss hockey, just being on the ice, playing the game. There's so much freedom on the ice." She leaned her head against the wall, legs spread out before her, and closed her eyes. A smile grew across her face. "One time, my boyfriend scored box tickets for a Leafs game. He got them from his granddad after some business deal. You know what box tickets are? You don't sit in the regular seats in the stadium. You sit in a special box where the rich bastards watch the game. There are leather couches, a bar, your own personal waitress. We ate chicken wings and hot dogs and poutine, and we drank so much beer, and the Leafs lost, but I didn't even care. Didn't care much. Fuck, that was a good day."
"I miss ballet," said Beast. The giant Russian, nearly seven feet tall, sat in the corner. He had removed his helmet, revealing his massive bald head. "And no, before you ask, I did not dance myself. But my little brother dances. He is best dancer in all of Russia, which means he is best dancer in world. Destined to be star! I would go with family to watch him perform. What a dancer! What talent! That is real talent, more than I will ever have. That is what I miss most from ho
me. Going to ballet, watching my brother dance. That and . . ." His cheeks flushed, and he blurted out the words. "That and my boyfriend, Boris." He glanced at Marco. "I told Poet, back in boot camp. Now I tell all of you. Before we die here, I want no secrets."
"I miss rock 'n' roll," said Elvis. "Big surprise, I know. And campfires out in the countryside. My friends and I would go camping every weekend, tell ghost stories, fish in the river, and I'd play guitar." Suddenly there were tears in his eyes. "As soon as we're back home, I'm going to take Poet and Maple and Kemi out camping. They live near me, you know. Just the four of us, none of my idiot farmer friends this time. And the rest of you, too, if you feel like swinging by Canada. We'll build a campfire and watch the stars. Lieutenant Ben-Ari should join us! I'll play guitar and sing."
"I'd rather hear the mating cries of the scum than your singing, Elvis," Addy said.
"I miss my wife," said Sergeant Singh. "And my little daughter. Once a month, I'd cook lobster curry. Have you ever had lobster curry? If we ever get back to Earth, you're all invited to my house, and I'll cook you some."
"I miss video games," said Corporal Diaz. "It's funny. I used to love first-person shooters, blasting evil aliens in the comfort of my own home. Never imagined I'd fight them for real."
"I miss boot camp," said Lailani.
They all turned toward her, even Sergeant Stumpy.
"Are you mental?" Elvis said.
"She's mental," said Addy, nodding.
Lailani shook her head. "It was better than my life before it. At boot camp, I had an actual tent. I had three meals a day. I had friends." Finally she pulled off her gas mask, and her eyes were damp. "I liked it there. It was the best time of my life." She made eye contact with Marco, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "I miss it."
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